A different Capital of Culture every year

The Italian Capital of Culture title moves every year: L'Aquila holds it in 2026, Pordenone in 2027 and Ancona in 2028, each with 1 million euro from the state to deliver its project.

3 titles already assigned: 2026, 2027, 2028

L'Aquila in Abruzzo is Italian Capital of Culture for 2026, Pordenone in Friuli Venezia Giulia for 2027, and Ancona in the Marche for 2028.

The 2027 proclamation came on March 12, 2025, which is the pattern: a city learns roughly two years ahead, which is the minimum time needed to build a program.

Look at the three together and the geography is the point. Abruzzo, the northeast, the middle Adriatic: not one of them is on the standard first-visit route through Italy, and that is what the scheme is for.

1 million euro, and it follows the dossier

The designated city receives 1 million euro to deliver the cultural project it presented.

That sum buys a year of programming, not a building. It is worth knowing before you arrive expecting a transformed city: what the title changes is the calendar, and the calendar is the thing you can actually use as a visitor.

A jury of 7, and a public hearing of 10

Selection runs through a dossier assessed by a jury of 7 experts, followed by a public hearing of the 10 shortlisted cities.

The hearing is the unusual part. Cities defend their bids in public, which turns the process into an argument about what a small Italian city thinks it is for, conducted out loud.

It also means the losing dossiers exist. Ten cities write a full cultural program every year and 9 of them do not get the money, which is why shortlisted cities so often run a reduced version of their bid anyway.

17 towns are in the running for 2029

The 2029 procedure is open: the call was published on June 3, 2026, and 17 comuni had declared an interest as of August 2026.

Formal candidacies can differ from declarations of interest, so the number will move before the shortlist. What it tells you now is the level of demand: 17 towns willing to write a dossier for a 1 in 17 chance and a single year of attention.

What the title actually does to a city's year

For 12 months the designated city runs a program it would not otherwise have run, funded by 1 million euro of state money against a written plan.

The practical consequence for a traveler is timing. A Capital of Culture year concentrates exhibitions, restorations and openings into a window, and the year after it, the same city is quieter and the restored things are still there.

L'Aquila 2026 is the clearest current case: a city with a reconstruction still under way, holding the title while the work continues. Our page on L'Aquila's rebuilding sets out the numbers behind that.

How to plan around the title

3 years are already fixed, so the planning window is unusually long: 2026 in Abruzzo, 2027 in the northeast, 2028 on the Adriatic.

None of the three is hard to reach and none is crowded in the way the standard circuit is. If you want a reason to spend two nights somewhere that is not Rome, Florence or Venice, an assigned title year is a defensible one, and it comes with a published program instead of a promise.

Two cautions on the dates. Ancona 2028 appears in the ministry's own roll of assigned titles, but the exact proclamation date has not been verified on a primary source, so it is not printed here. And the 2029 field of 17 is a count of declared interest in August 2026, not of filed candidacies: expect it to fall.

Finally, do not confuse the Italian title with the European one. They are separate schemes with separate juries and separate money. Matera held the European Capital of Culture title for 2019, designated at the end of 2014 and the first city of the Italian south to get it, under a European process that runs on a much longer cycle than the annual national competition described here.

↑ Contents